


Making Music

by MrsSaxon



Category: V for Vendetta (2005)
Genre: Cautionary Tale, Fairy Tales, Gen, Humor, careful what you wish for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 15:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3574988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsSaxon/pseuds/MrsSaxon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about a foolish man who tried to ban music and what happened when music came back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making Music

**Author's Note:**

> The fairy tale that the bulk of this fic is about is not mine. It was written by the exceptional Robert Shearman for the Doctor Who audio story "Scherzo." It is far from necessary to know that story in order to understand the fic, so this isn't a crossover. But credit where credit's due. All of the italicized passages are Shearman's, not mine. And while I, sadly, can't provide a recording of Hugo Weaving reciting this, there is Paul McGann and that's pretty good too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3oEA7VG_tU

“Was this piano banned?” Evey asked, trailing her fingers over the handsome instrument.

“Yes, yes it was. Fascist regimes detest the free expression of music,” V replied, seating himself on the bench and beginning to pick out “The Entertainer.”

“But there’s a piano in every church, they’re played every Sunday,” she leaned against the solid wall of the piano’s side.

“They play only the prescribed music,” V corrected, “nothing controversial, nothing new, and everything approving of the current order.” His fingers spun out into a raging cacophony, pounding on the keys.

“Stop it, stop it!” Evey covered her ears, “that’s not music!”

V stopped and cocked his head at her, “Au contraire that was the Rite of Spring. When it was first performed, it caused riots,” he added gleefully. “They banned it because it makes you think, as all music should,” he wagged a finger at her, “This society has dulled your senses, my dear Evey.”

Evey pouted, “Well I can learn. And there’s plenty of good music that still sounds like music,” her nose wrinkled resentfully.

V sighed, “Ah yes, perhaps jumping into the avant-garde head first is not the most effective learning method. How about this…” V started to play something more melodious.

“Swan Lake,” Evey smiled.

V nodded to her, “Very good. More to your liking?”

Evey nodded eagerly and sat down beside him, “I went to see it once, before they started closing the theaters. It was beautiful.”

“Tchaikovsky had an uncanny way of communicating loss, didn’t he?” V strained the keys, pulling for the deep, sorrowful tones the song demanded.

Evey nodded and frowned thoughtfully, “V, why does the government hate music? Why do they ban anything different?”

V slowly stopped playing, focused on the edge of the piano, “It’s because… ah! Actually I know a fairy tale that explains exactly why and why we must keep music alive. Would you like to hear it?” He turned toward her, folding his hands in his lap.

Evey blinked, “I’ve never heard of any fairy tales like that,” she looked at him curiously, nodding.

“It’s not a well-known fairy tale; as a matter of fact I found it on some scratch paper in one of my books, quite by accident. You can be sure that anything written down and left in a book must have some significance, though sadly forgotten by whoever left it there” he chuckled to himself.

“The story begins, as these stories often do, in a faraway land not too dissimilar to ours…

_There lived a king. And he was a good king; in an age when good was something of an unfashionable rarity. He was very very wise, and very very powerful, but he was also very very old. And he realized that for all his great wisdom and his great power, he would soon have to leave his kingdom, once and for all, and make the journey to the outside world of infinite darkness. And so, on the eve of his departure, when his physicians had finished all their head shaking and his wives had wrung as many tears from their eyes as they could, he called his son and heir to his side:_

_“Everything you see is yours to command,” he said, “but be advised, the better slaves are those who still believe they taste some freedom. Play the tyrant, but you must inspire love as well as fear.”_

_Yet the son cared not for his words. And when the corpse had been dispatched with much pomp and fireworks to the darker realms outside, the new king resolved to stretch the limits of his authority. He gathered all the people before him and told them that their every thought must match his thought; no will should exist save his will. And people being people, they agreed._

_Those that didn’t vanished in the night and their families soon learned to pretend that they had never existed._ ”

“V, this is still about music isn’t it?” Evey interrupted, feeling a familiar political tone take over the story.

“Yes Evey, I’m coming to that, this is still the introduction,” from the tone of his voice, she could tell he was gently mocking her.

Evey groaned and folded her arms, impatiently waiting for the rest.

“ _But still the king was not content._

_So he instructed all the animals in his kingdom, that they must now obey his commands. Horses should bark. Dogs should mew. Fish should fly from tree to tree, exactly as he desired. And animals being animals, they agreed._

_Some of the pigs had to be culled but no one minded because they tasted so lip-smackingly good. And the cats had to go because no one could tell a cat anything. But soon the people and the animals lived in perfect harmony, their lives precise expressions of the whims of their lord. Every living creature obeyed their king. Doing everything that he wanted to the smallest detail, sometimes even before he knew he wanted it._

_But still the king was not content._

_Living creatures only made up the smallest number of his subjects. So he gave out further orders. He instructed that the waves should crash upon the shore, only when he gave the word. He instructed that the wind should not blow, but suck. Time should not run forwards, but backwards, or sideways. It took years to persuade them. Soldiers slashed at the waves until their swords were soaked with wave blood. Wind and time were locked in the deepest dungeons until, starving, they gave in._

_The king ruled the elements, but still, he was not content._ ”

Evey crossed her legs on the bench now, rapt in the story. She was getting that familiar, predictive tingle, sensing the hitch in the story was about to come forward.

V took a deep breath, adjusting his inflection accordingly for the story,

“ _There was one subject that still balked at his power: music. How the king hated music, refusing to be constrained, refusing to be disciplined. A small burst of recitative flowering into a fugued apparition or a cantata breaking out overnight into a fully-fledged oratorio._

_“Will no man rid me of these turbulent tunes?” he cried._ ” V shouted, doing his best Richard III.

Evey laughed and applauded as V half-bowed before continuing the story.

“ _And the militia, now trained to obey his merest impulse, took him at his word._

_They seized the music. Every last crochet and minim, each breathe and innocent little semi-breathe, and threw them out of the kingdom. They threw them into the outside world of infinite darkness. And music was banned from the kingdom forever._

_At last, the king had his own universe. It was his and no one else’s. He was happy. And no one dared point out to him that he had exiled the only means by which he could express it._ ”

V seemed to look at her expectantly with an ‘I-told-you-so’ air, even though Evey knew it was impossible for his expression to have changed.

“Alright, alright, patience is a virtue, now how does it end?” she nudged him.

“Well now, let’s see if I can remember…” he dragged it out.

“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?”

V snickered, “A little.” He sat up straighter and returned to the story,                                                                                                                               

“ _The kingdom was a very quiet land. Birds sat silent in the trees; their beaks now stopped fast, their chirping and twittering frozen hard in their throats. There was no longer a harmony to time; seconds would race on or trudge forward or simply come to a listless halt. The waves crashed noiselessly onto the sand for even within that there had been a trace of music._

_There was no rhythm to life anymore. And the king’s people felt it the worst. They had been slaves, but whilst they still had songs of liberty on their lips, they had been happy slaves. Some rebelled and were put to the torture. But even the torturers, who once had calmed their consciences with soothing music, were unable to bear the awful, glaring, accusing silence._

_The fact was clear. Anything could be borne with music and nothing could be borne without it._

_And the king would sit on his throne in misery. He dearly loved his wives, but now he heard in their words no love returned, no tune, no melody. For this, he executed them regularly. The women he loved, their heads rolling from the scaffold soundlessly, the king himself, quite alone, weeping for them. All, all quite silent._ ”

V’s voice took on an acidic, satirical tone as he came to the finish, “ _One morning, the king decided he would pardon music. He drew up a contract, stamped it with his own royal seal: music was free to return from the outside world of infinite darkness. And to bear the good news, he sent several messengers there, some by hanging, some by stabbing, one or two by slow-acting poison. But none returned. And nor did music._

_The king was desperate. He called upon his sorcerers, his necromancers, and those who were trained in the forbidden knowledge of music resurrection. But it became obvious that the king himself would have to make a personal appeal to his prodigal son._

_With court physicians administering, and the last of his wives looking on with glee, the king was slowly bled. Each drop landing in a metal container with a plop that just managed to be wholly tuneless._

_And as he wavered between death and life, he stepped into the darkness and called out, “I have been a foolish man. I should have inspired love as well as fear. Please, let the music play again. All its songs and symphonies and sundry choral works. Please, give my world a reason to live._ ”

“Do you want to guess what happens next Evey?” V asked quietly.

Evey frowned at him, unsure if he was mocking her or if it was just his usual smug, know-it-all voice, “Music returns.”

V waited.

Evey took the bait, “But?”

V chuckled softly, “Yes, there is a but. _It was seven days and seven nights before the king recovered and he awoke to a miracle. Once more, birds were trilling in the trees, the clocks chimed, and waves roared. Once more the world had music!_

_And his favorite wife of all stood over him and smiled. And in the tone of her lilting voice he felt once again that she loved him. The people were in celebration, singing in the streets whatever tunes would come into their heads. And they sang until their throats turned red raw. They sang until their arteries burst and gushed; they screamed their new songs of pain._

_The king watched in horror as the birds fell dead in the street. As the waves struggled limply, and then were drowned by the seas beneath them. He heard his infant son cry out his last, his face bitten off by a savage lullaby. The lilting voice of his wife, that he had loved so much, grinned at him cruelly before wrapping itself around her throat and throttling her silent._

_The music raced through the kingdom, sparing none its terrible beauty._

_As the bodies of his subjects fell to the ground, their death rattles sounded like the rhythm of a perfect drum. And the music at last came for the king._

_“Why?” he asked._

_“Because we have been to the outside world,” the music replied, “we have seen the infinite darkness, and we have learned that we need not only inspire love, but fear.”_

_And with the sound of brass and strings so beautiful it stopped the king’s heart; the music swallowed him up, whole, and became the new and dreadful lord of the entire world._ ”

Evey stared, surprised and a little disturbed by the big but to this story. She sat back, not having realized she had inched forward in her eagerness to listen, and stretched.

“Did you like it?” V leaned closer, the way he did when he wanted to communicate a particular interest in what she had to say.

“I’m… not sure to be honest. It’s a strange story. I’m not sure what it meant,” she looked up at him with a wrinkle in her brow, the question she hoped he could answer.

“Not all stories have to be didactic, not even fairy tales. But this is very much a ‘careful what you wish for’ wouldn’t you say?” V snorted.

“Yeah, but don’t the consequences outweigh the crimes? If everyone’s dead, then what was the point of the lesson?” Evey frowned.

V cocked his head in contemplation, then stood and walked a few steps, arms behind his back, “Perhaps it is for the audience to learn from example, rather than repeat the steps. A cautionary tale.”

Evey thought about that, then slowly nodded, “So now we know not to ban music or it will come back with a vengeance.”

“A vendetta, you might almost say.” And the smile on his plaster face perfectly mimicked the expression he had under it.


End file.
